wifi 450-500 feet, almost line of sight, anyone done this?

[James Knott]

ted leslie wrote:
> i have a need to use wifi 450-500 feet away from the base station,
> and the point 500' away is almost line of site, just a few bushes in between.
> i googled and saw some units claiming as much as 600'
> but others , in practice, not getting that much.
> Anyone done 500' confirmed? doesn't matter if its 'g' or 'n' or whatever,
> i just need basic solid connection, not blazing speed.
> as a last resort i know i can get a repeater and put it in the middle,
> but thats messy (i.e. leaving a repeater, hooked to battery, outside).
> i also saw a "dish" wifi, that is supposed to double range,
> but thats sounds fishy, 
> i have often wondered about these range boosters,
> given, you have to get the signal back to the unit from the pc,
> so I find these booster hard to believe.
>
>   
There are some high gain antennas that will do the trick.  A popular one
is called "Cantenna", which incidentally is a name borrowed from a
Heathkit dummy load.  When dealing with radio communications, the big
concern is path loss, which has to be overcome by transmitter power and
antenna gain.  The typical WiFi NIC is more or less omni-directional,
sending the signal in all directions.  A gain antenna will focus the
signal in a favoured direction, and provide an apparent increase in
power.  However, this apparent increase comes at the cost of signal
strength in other directions.  Bottom line, higher gain antennas provide
more gain, but also a more directional signal.

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